Pride before the fall: Vancouver soundly snubbed in ‘best Canadian cities to live’ rankings. Wait, so living in a depressing, smoke-filled hellhole beholden to obscene wealth and speculation; rife with overdoses and NIMBYism; new drivers with Lambos and frozen welfare rates; where you need an income of $150,000 to live in a City-approved “affordable” rental in disposable cookie cutter boxes; where money laundering is normalized as “unintentional failures” and the solution is more supply doesn’t quite make the cut?

You mean where music venues are constantly shutting down and creatives are leaving en masse; where we can’t staff our restaurants; where rich assholes unironically protest property tax hikes as the start of a class war; where wages are stagnant; where we put Poor Doors on our social housing projects; where the VPD disproportionately target Indigenous people; where homeless people die in Tim Hortons…there aren’t the kinds of things that would make Vancouver the best city in the world Canada BC?

You mean… oh god never mind: Metro Vancouver real estate prices are 65% overvalued: Economist.

But hey, at least we have a blistering sense of self awareness, right? Vote now for Metro Vancouver’s Unofficial Ambassador: Michael J. Fox vs. Canuck the Crow. Jesus…

Honourable mentions: the orca that carried her dead calf for 17 days, a coho smolt covered in sea lice, a fentanyl test-strip, the Sahotas, and Willy the Wacky Wildfire: B.C. declares state of emergency as hundreds of wildfires burn across province.

Meanwhile: Fraser River is now so warm it may kill migrating sockeye salmon.

But hey, let’s jail 75 year olds: Vancouver council candidate Jean Swanson receives seven-day sentence for Kinder Morgan protest. Derrick O’Keefe:

Look outside: the future our side has warned about for decades is here. Jean and water and land defenders everywhere are setting an example for us all.

We need a new level of political courage to get through the climate crisis, but if we build strong movements we can do it. Let the oligarchs make their Elysium plans of self-preservation; we’ve got the numbers and if we can come together and assert our power against the greedy bastards we can win a livable planet for millennia to come.

Vancouver Art Gallery North Plaza officially renamed šx????n?q Xwtl’e7én? Square. Irwin Oostindie:

As Pam Palmater says: “Reconciliation is fluff.” Redress is substantial. So let’s all move through and past this renaming and start structurally apologizing for benefiting from these stolen lands with cash and land return.

Satire of the day: ‘We warned you’: After statue removed, millions unable to remember name of Canada’s 1st Prime Minister.

Runner up: Sun writer disappointed he has to shelve anti-Islam column after learning Fredericton shooter white.

Overall health includes oral health: Should dental be part of universal health care. I can’t even believe this is something that is being debated. In an age of ever increasing precarity, due in part to dismantling of labour unions and the rise of the gig economy, something so basic as us pooling our money together to fix our teeth is somehow controversial…

Thanks in part to anti-tax mistruths spread by the bootstrap Randian fuckwads at the Fraser Institute: Don’t Listen to the Fraser Institute. Canadians Are Not Paying More In Taxes Than ‘The Necessities of Life’.

Bonus: Capitalist Vegans Are Tearing Apart This Toronto Neighbourhood.